Tennis legend drops bombshell about the sport's surprising drug problem: 'Everyone's on them'
Ivanisevic, a former Wimbledon singles champion who now coaches Stefanos Tsitsipas, has lifted the lid on the mounting psychological pressures he sees elite athletes facing.
His comments come in the wake of Alexander Zverev 's recent admission about his mental struggles where he described himself as empty, joyless and needing therapy as he crashed out of Wimbledon.
'When I listen to players, everyone's on antidepressants, Zverev says he's in a bad place,' Ivanisevic told Clay magazine.
'I don't know why they [the players] put so much pressure on themselves. Maybe it's outside expectations, society's expectations - they can't handle it.'
Tennis icon Novak Djokovic believes social media is to blame for a lot of problems facing athletes today.
'Social media is extremely present and largely dictates the mood and daily rhythm of an athlete - especially young ones, but older ones too,' he told Sportklub.
'Everyone is on social media, and you can get lost there, get too attached to comments, to what someone types on a keyboard or phone… and that hurts.
'It's not trivial. That's something we need to talk about seriously.'
The 38-year-old star also spoke of the the pressure of social media on young athletes.
'Kids are pushed too early into strict professionalism before they've developed emotional intelligence, which is part of psychological preparation for life,' he said.
'If a player gets a bit lost in that, it can strongly affect their psyche and how they live their life.'
Zverev's brave admission following being knocked out in the first round has revived the conversation around mental health in tennis.
'I feel very alone out there at times,' he said.
'I struggle mentally ... I'm trying to find ways to kind of get out of this hole. I keep kind of finding myself back in it in a way.
'I feel, generally speaking, quite alone in life at the moment, which is a feeling that is not very nice.
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Times
24 minutes ago
- Times
Behind closed doors: what I saw as a nurse on a psychiatric ward
'My God, I hope I never get mentally ill,' says a doctor in Fragile Minds, an account of life on psychiatric wards in Britain. You can only agree with her. The book — by Bella Jackson, a trainee mental health nurse so shocked by what she witnessed that she left the profession — reads like a cross between One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But as she says when we meet, 'This is now.' A rape victim is slapped with a diagnosis of personality disorder (PD) and called 'attention-seeking'. Her request to be assessed by a female is refused as she's 'manipulative'. A man dares to tell the consultant his medication is causing chest pain. He's threatened with 'seclusion''. He pleads, in tears, but is made to feel like nothing, bullied into meekly submitting. As he was as a child, you imagine. 'It's re-traumatising,' Jackson says. Jackson — now 41, a therapist in private practice and mental health mentor, in London — had worked in social care and in prisons for five years when she began training as a psychiatric nurse on NHS acute mental health wards and centres in the south of England 'within the last ten years', she says, vague to preserve confidentiality. She was stunned by the 'dissociation' of staff. She wanted to believe the doctors knew best, but instinctively felt something was 'very wrong'. Her university tutor agreed there was 'bad practice', but not enough for anyone to do anything. 'There are pockets of good care,' he told her, 'but there is a lot of this.' She thought: 'Can't we complain?' She's taken aside, told not to ask so many questions. 'I want people to see what's happening behind these closed doors,' she says now, so they can 'protect themselves and their loved ones, if they are involved in mental health services'. So they know what questions to ask. Too often, 'We assume the answers we are being given are the correct ones.' She says: 'You need to be curious. When it comes to mental health, the expert on us is us.' This affects us all. It's alarmingly easy for anyone to be locked away. 'There wasn't consistency — of diagnosis, of sectioning,' Jackson says. 'It was so bizarre to see this incredibly important decision-making be so haphazard.' She witnesses a middle-class student brought into A&E. A spiteful-sounding nurse judges her 'bipolar' and calls a psychiatrist who declares, 'She's totally psychotic.' Jackson says: 'Hasn't she just smoked a load of spice?' A clinician can argue that drug-taking has 'activated' an underlying illness. People aren't believed. The shrink says: 'She thinks she's a famous singer.' Jackson looks up the girl on her phone — she's a folk singer. Only her family turning up, refusing antipsychotics — and the lack of an available bed — avoid her being admitted to an acute psychiatric ward. • Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing Once someone's in the system, labelled with, for example, schizophrenia, PD (often 'weaponised') or delusional disorder, anything they say can be paranoia. Racism features, a lot. An African woman insists she's been sectioned because her kids want her house. Crazy. But it turns out she's sane enough to get a diplomat from her country of origin to order her release. Another inpatient, in his fifties, characterised as sharp, witty — 'I understand you, I just don't agree with you,' he tells a patronising nurse — appears to have autism. His family's request for an assessment is refused as it's 'too late'. Jackson is told 'they don't want the stigma of mental illness''. She saw little understanding of neurodiversity, and cites research that finds misdiagnosis is common. Yet, if a doctor says, ''Oh no, it's not that,' how often do we push back?' Why couldn't his family get him out? 'The legalities around sectioning would mean that it was very difficult.' On a section, you're deemed unsafe to be outside. 'You'd have to go through a tribunal. Some people did really fight to get their family members out, but a lot of people didn't.' ('How do I argue with a doctor who says my relative is unwell?') Characters are composites to protect identities, but it all happened, 'all these things were said to me,' Jackson says. She carried around a tatty notebook, 'just writing everything down, because I could not believe what was happening'. Patients' treatment by staff is frequently callous. 'Some people have good experiences,' Jackson stresses — but Fragile Minds focuses on the worst. The mentally unwell are often traumatised, yet there's no attempt to understand the context for their behaviour. When people go into services, 'they really are hopeful for compassion. It's devastating when they don't get it,' she says. 'It makes me so angry. It can really destroy us.' Most are 'boxed into a diagnosis' and medicated, often oversedated. Jackson and another decent nurse question a young man being given four daily doses of lorazepam — a benzodiazepine — as he can barely stand. They're ignored until he nearly drowns shaving — collapsing unconscious face-down in his sink. 'These medications do help a lot of people,' Jackson says. But many have severe side-effects, and also they're used 'punitively'. She saw medication used 'as a restraint on wards, to calm people down, to shut them up, put them to sleep. It's used by force, it's used through coercion — very different to someone choosing, and saying, 'This helps me.'' • Our new health crisis — we're diagnosing too much, too early One nurse says: 'I'm all about a good injection.' To Jackson's horror that a woman prescribed the antipsychotic clozapine has undergone a drastic mental and physical deterioration on the drug, her doctor responds Orwellian-style: 'I think she's got better.' Soon after, the patient dies. Jackson hopes it doesn't come across 'that the staff are demonised'. She says they're exhausted, overworked, and don't receive adequate psychological training or support to withstand working with distressed, unwell people and remain empathic. 'You needed a shield, almost, an absence of feeling. And what that created then was very much an 'us and them'.' But it wasn't just no empathy — your book describes cruelty, I point out. 'I think there was some cruelty,' she says slowly. 'You saw prejudice and bias, and cruelty.' She suspects much of it comes from emotional burnout, 'and being asked to do things that feel morally dubious — if they're asked to restrain someone and inject them against their will, what does that do to a person?' You can't then be all chatty and empathic with that patient. It's upsetting to dig deeper. Numbing yourself is 'survival mode'. So, 'You almost become this jailor.' Plus, psychiatry is hierarchical. 'There's a cruelty that comes from unchecked power. It was easy to forget that it was a person in front of you.' Ideally — 'and these things are being fought for, in the wings' — there'd be more access to psychological therapy, family therapy, arts therapy and peer-to-peer support. We need to help people to find meaning in their lives, acquire skills, agency and self-esteem, she says. 'These are all parts of us that we need to rebuild once we break down, and we can't do that stuck in a ward where there's a TV screwed to the floor and some non-throwable furniture and there's nothing else to do other than take your drugs and sit still.' And yet, she stresses, it's complex. 'The need to think about what someone's been through, and emotional connection, empathy, is so important in recovery.' But crucially, 'There's all sorts of risk with mental illness and mental distress,' so as a psychiatrist you're assessing risk: 'Is this person going to harm themselves? Harm others?' • Six-day waits and security guards: the mental health crisis crippling A&E A key question. A recent NHS survey found one in five people in Britain have a mental health condition and in 16 to 24-year-olds it's 25.8 per cent. But for all those who think, this could be my child — there are those thinking, 'What about the likes of 'the Nottingham killer'?' This paranoid schizophrenic patient, repeatedly sectioned and with a record of 'extremely serious' violence, was allowed to stop his medication and go free (despite warnings from his family). He murdered three people. We've all seen their faces. Their grieving families. Many patients Jackson encounters exhibit disturbing, frightening behaviour. Some are misunderstood rather than psychotic, she believes — and some are dangerous and violent. Not everyone can recover, surely? 'I agree with that,' she says. So when does giving the benefit of the doubt put others at risk? Jackson stresses she's not denying that some people are very disturbed and need monitoring. 'And we can wonder about what happened to them.' Distinguishing between the dangerous and the harmless, 'figuring out what the dangers are and the risks', she believes, requires 'exploration and curiosity and needing to look at the context and seeing everyone as individuals'. Not, as she saw, 'a blanket approach'. She says: 'The 'how do we get it right' question is something I can't answer.' Having left the profession shortly after qualifying, she still feels some shame that she was 'too crushed' to stay within it. But she remains 'honoured' to help people with their mental health. ('I am not a 'silent therapist',' she promises, on her website, 'and will bring warm, gentle inquisitive exploration to our sessions.') Meanwhile, what Jackson is certain of is this: 'The system we have now is not making it safer for people. It's not reducing the number of suicides or violent crimes. What we're doing now isn't working.'Fragile Minds: Stories from an NHS Mental Health Ward by Bella Jackson (Doubleday £20) is out now
Times
25 minutes ago
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Three ways to avoid B12 deficiency
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Daily Mail
40 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Diogo Jota's legacy to his family: The amount set to be inherited by tragic Liverpool star's wife and their three small children after his car crash death
Tragic footballer Diogo Jota 's widow could stand to inherit up to £35million from his estate for the financial security of her and their three children, MailOnline can reveal. The Liverpool star, 28, who died alongside his brother Andre, 25, in a crash last week in Spain, has been signed with Premier League clubs since 2018 - and amassed a fortune in that time. Jota first signed a contract with Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2018 which saw him earn £38,000 a week. Two years of these wages saw him earn £3,952,000 before he hit the big time with a move to Anfield, where the first two years of his four year contract at £83,000 per week saw him pocket another £8,632,000. As a result of his phenomenal talent, Liverpool then extended the deal for five years in 2022 and upped his wages to £140,000 in a contract that saw him earn £21,840,000 before his tragic death. Built into this was performance bonuses, and his 65 goals in 182 games contributed to his wealth. However, he was also an Esports entrepreneur and global brand ambassador. Jota was due to receive another £14.5million for the remaining two years of his contract, which despite reports in Portuguese media suggesting Liverpool will honour, has not yet been confirmed. It means Jota's total earnings of around £34.4million since arriving in the Premier League could be inherited by Rute and their two sons Dinis, four, Duarte, two, and their eight-month-old baby daughter Mafalda. It is not known how much of this money he had spent, but a chunk of it had been invested in a five-bedroom, four-bathroom house in the upmarket north Liverpool suburb of Blundellsands. According to publicly available land registry documents, Jota and his wife bought the house in May 2022 for £2,125,000, where they rubbed shoulders with other players. The house had been listed for three years before selling and had been previously rented out. A brochure of the house available online shows an ornately tiled marble entrance hall leading to a reception area with a brass and wrought iron staircase. The ground floor living area has Georgian style double doors, underfloor heating and a Bose sound system. In the kitchen there are two sink units and a five hob Gaggenau cooker, wine chiller and fitted walnut units with granite work surfaces. The indoor pool is 39ft long and there is also a jacuzzi and steam room, while the games room has a snooker table and a pool table. Also on the ground floor is an eight-seat home cinema room with a surround sound system. Companies House records in the UK also show that Jota set up an image rights company called Minute J Ltd in February 2023 to channel some of his football earnings and his father Joaquim was also associated with it. The first set of accounts filed in December 2024 cover the period the initial first 12 months of the company and show it made £186,754 but owed creditors £49,786, with the bulk of £44,825 to HMRC for Corporation Tax. Football players often set up image rights companies as a way to control earnings from things like name, nickname, squad number which might be used in sponsorship, merchandising and endorsements. Besides his earnings from football Jota also had lucrative deals with Nike and EA Sports bringing in an estimated £3.3million a year and he set up his own Esports team called Luna Galaxy. According to Portuguese media, Jota also had a collection of luxury cars worth more than £1million including a Range Rover Sport, Porsche 911 Turbo S, a Ferrari 488, an Audi Q7 and a Mercedes-Benz G63AMG. Website, The Richest, in a detailed profile of Jota's financial worth, said: 'He left behind a financial legacy few soccer players achieve so young. 'His business smart matched his on-field vision, he left behind a blueprint for how athletes can build wealthy and legacy beyond the pitch.' Jota's tragic death came just 13 days after he wedded Rute, his teenage sweetheart. At the ceremony he declared himself as the luckiest man in the world to be her husband and a series of emotional images and videos were posted to social media of their special day. Many who were there on what Rute described as that 'dream come true' wedding day then had to devastatingly fly in for Jota and his brother's funeral just over two weeks later. Family and friends, including footballers, came from all corners of the globe to the 17th-century Igreja Matriz church. It was there that they heard the Bishop of Porto, D. Manuel Linda, send a message to the couple's three children. The bishop said: 'At this moment you are suffering immensely or perhaps not because you do not realise it. The ones who suffer a lot are your mother and your grandparents. 'Seeing the mortal remains of a child must be a greater torment, but when there are two urns there are no words... 'If it is difficult to see an adult cry, it is even more difficult to see a child cry. I send you a special greeting for your mother and grandparents.' Both coffins were carried through the front doors of the church to the sound of violins and applause in a procession led by two priests at 10am. Jota's Liverpool team-mates flew in overnight. They included Virgil van Dijk, the club's captain, and Andrew Robertson, who carried red wreaths in the shape of football shirts emblazoned with Jota's number 20 and his brother's number 30. Former Liverpool players, including Jordan Henderson and James Milner, were also present. Jota and his brother were 190 miles into a trip from Porto to Santander, where he planned to take a ferry to England, when they crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora. Their bodies were buried, not cremated, in a graveyard screened by olive trees. Jota's team-mates from his former club Wolves, including Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio, joined club officials to pay their respects. They were spotted escorting a Wolves-themed wreath which read: 'Diogo your desire to fight and win lit up Molineux.' Speaking after the service, Roberto Martinez, the Portugal manager, was emotional as he told of his sadness over the tragedy. He said: 'I can only say that these are very, very sad days. Today was a demonstration for Diogo and Andre that we are all together and that we are Portugal. 'Now, I would like to thank everyone for their presence, for all the messages from all over the world. We are with Andre Silva and Diogo Jota. Always, always with us.'
